A Breakdown Of The 2012 Election Exit Polls

Young voters represented a greater share of the national electorate Tuesday than four years ago, once again voting for President Barack Obama by a huge margin, boosting his reelection.
Voters from ages 18 to 29 represented 19 percent of all those who voted on Tuesday, according to the early National Exit Poll conducted by Edison Research. That's an increase of one percentage point from 2008. Obama captured 60 percent youth vote, compared with Mitt Romney's 36 percent.
Headlines suggested a lack of enthusiasm among college students in this election and polling showed fewer were registered or planning to vote.
"The role young people would play during this election has been a major question in American politics for over a year, and it seems the answer is that they have been as big a force at the polls in 2012 as in 2008," said Peter Levine, director of the youth research organization CIRCLE at Tufts University. "They again supported President Obama, although not as lopsidedly as in 2008. Until tomorrow, it will be unclear whether youth turnout -- or the turnout of any group -- rose or fell, but young people were proportionately well represented in the 2012 electorate."
Obama's 60 percent to 36 percent victory among young people this year is smaller than his 66 percent-31 percent win over John McCain in 2008. But it is still the highest any Democratic presidential candidate scored in 30 years among 18- to 29 year-olds. John Kerry, for instance, only won the youth vote by 9 percentage points in 2004. Young people made up 17 percent of the electorate in 2004, when Kerry was defeated by President George W. Bush.

Congrats again to the POTUS Barry-O!
Hit the flipside to see the exit poll stat by stat.

Exit Poll stats via NYTimesThe Election Day polls were based on questionnaires completed by voters as they left voting stations throughout the country on Tuesday, supplemented by telephone interviews with absentee and early voters. The polls were conducted by Edison Research of Somerville, N.J., for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News. The national results are based on voters in 350 randomly chosen precincts across the United States, and include absentee voters and early voters interviewed by telephone.
The state results are based on voters in 11 to 50 randomly selected precincts across each of 18 states analyzed by The Times. In certain states, some interviews were also conducted by telephone with absentee voters and early voters. In Colorado all interviews were by telephone and in Arizona the majority were. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the results from such polls should differ by no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points nationally, and 4 to 5 points in each state, from what would have been obtained by seeking to interview all voters who cast ballots in each of these elections.
Results based on smaller subgroups, like demographic groupings, have a larger potential sampling error. In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of voter opinion on Election Day, such as the reluctance of some voters to take time to fill out the questionnaire, may introduce other sources of error into the poll.
The Times was assisted in its polling analysis by Ana Maria Arumi of Studio Arumi, Barry M. Feinberg of BMF Research & Consulting, Geoffrey D. Feinberg of Yale University, David R. Jones of Baruch College-CUNY, Michael R. Kagay of Princeton, N.J., Jeffrey W. Ladewig of the University of Connecticut, Helmut Norpoth of SUNY-Stony Brook, Annie L. Siegel of New York and Janet L. Streicher of Citibank.